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Post With Care: How Language Use Influences the Effectiveness of CEOs' Climate‐Related Messages on Social Media

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: ABSTRACT Chief executive officers (CEOs) play a pivotal role in shaping public discourse on climate change through social media, yet how their language use affects the effectiveness of climate‐related posts remains unclear. Drawing on schema‐congruity theory and leader role expectations, we conceptualize certainty in language as congruent and anxiety as incongruent CEO language. Using automated text analysis of 5544 posts on X by 50 CEOs of Global Fortune 500 companies, we examine how (in)congruent language use influences public engagement and how climate content moderates these effects. A follow‐up experiment ( N = 119) investigates strategically important downstream effects (e.g., willingness to invest in the CEO's company) via heightened attention. Results show that congruent language (i.e., certainty) generally increases public engagement while incongruent language (i.e., anxiety) reduces it, yet in climate posts, anxiety can become congruent and exert positive effects, underscoring the critical role of content. Findings offer guidance for effective sustainability messaging.

Source: Business Strategy and the Environment

DOI: 10.1002/bse.71505

Authors: Ellen Weber, Marah Blaurock, Kristof Coussement, Irini Tsaga, Marion Büttgen